CENTRAL BANK OF KENYA
Address by
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Norfolk Hotel, Nairobi
Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Hon. Samuel Poghisio, Minister for Information and
Communications;
Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of
Information and Communications;
Mr. Charles Njoroge, Director General, Communications
Commission of Kenya;
N. Arjun, Airtel Chief Projects and Transformation Officer, Airtel
Africa;
Rene Meza, Managing Director, Airtel Kenya;
Distinguished Guests:
Ladies and Gentlemen: It gives me great pleasure to be here this
morning during this historic launch of Airtel Money Transfer Service brand
into the Kenyan Financial Sector following the successful application early
this year by Airtel to re-brand and re-launch the service and subsequent
approval by the Central Bank of Kenya.
Ladies and Gentlemen: I am informed that the key objective of Airtel
Money Brand in line with this launch is twofold: First, to provide a convenient,
affordable, and easily accessible money transfer service to Kenyans of all walks
of life and second, to provide the banked members of the society with a
convenient way to access and transact funds held in their bank accounts. This
objective is in tandem with the Central Bank policy on adoption of innovative
technological platforms to scale up access to financial services. In fact, Mobile
Phone Financial services have in particular presented Kenya with an
opportunity to significantly upscale access to financial services cost effectively.
It has also shown there is a market and everyone now wants a slice of it.
Ladies and Gentlemen: The Kenyan Mobile Phone Financial Services story
has become a much acclaimed global case study. To date, over 17.8 million
Kenyans transfer over Ksh.3.1 billion to each other daily with over 1.1 million
transactions. In particular, and in terms of registered users and agents’ base, I
am informed that Airtel controls 18 percent of the registered users and 25
percent of agents. Further, I wish to commend Airtel for planning to carry out
an extensive awareness campaign immediately after this launch in order to
stimulate the uptake of the service in addition to the recent extensive country
wide agent recruitment exercise by the company. It is my firm belief that this
will positively impact on the visibility of the Airtel Brand in the market. In fact,
there are so many areas not yet fully covered out there to be served, go for

them and increase the share of the population using mobile phone financial
services.
Ladies and Gentlemen: Effective and better regulation requires
prudential guidelines to provide guidance in all policy and oversight
activities of Payment System Operators and Regulators. In this regard, I am
gland to inform you that the Bank early this year released draft regulations
whose objective is to ensure that E-Money Issuers and Payment Service
Providers conduct their businesses prudently and in accordance with the
provisions of the relevant legal provisions including the Banking Act,
Central Bank of Kenya Act, the Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money
Laundering Act, the Companies Act, the Microfinance Act, and the SACCO
Societies Act.
Ladies and Gentlemen: The public policy objective of Central Bank in
the National Payments Systems is to ensure safety, efficiency and
effectiveness of the payment system as a whole. In this regard, please allow
me to point out that with increased use of mobile phone money transfer
services by the wider general public, inherent system-wide implications are
bound to arise and therefore it is prudent for all stakeholders to ensure;
That appropriate measures are put in place to safeguard the integrity of the
systems at all times in order to protect customers against risks such as
frauds, loss of money and loss of privacy.
That the system will provide adequate measures to guard against money
laundering among others.
That the system is capable of mitigating the risks of access by nonauthorized persons such as hackers and others.
We have operating platforms within reach and disaster recovery sites in
secure locations and tested at all times.
Ladies and gentlemen: In conclusion, I wish to thank Airtel and its
Management team for the important role it is playing in the economy. With
these few remarks I wish to declare Airtel Money Transfer Service Brand
officially launched.
Thank you